A New Life/Our Poor Defenses
This is the fourth episode of the A New Life Season Two, and the twelfth episode overall. The day quickly passed by, while Pete and the others tried to show Jim and his group that they could pull their own weight there and be a valuable addition to the restaurant group, and not some dead weight and a drain in their food and medicine. ---- When Jim told Matthew that it was time to clear the zombies at the back, Pete and Kurt volunteered to help him. They exited through the kitchen and the small space between the restaurant and the wired fence. "Hey, where did that big wall go?" asked Kurt, confused. "Is a gas station, it doesn't have walls surrounding it, d'oh. We builded our own, though." replied Matthew, opening a small gate on the wired fence. "It took a damn lot of time, almost cracked my back." "It doesn't seems it needs much to do that." said Pete, laughing as he tapped Matthew's back with little to no force, but still almost got him to the ground. "Oouch! Why the fuck did you did that, man?" complained Matthew, while Pete and Kurt laughed at him. "Anyway, the dead tends to throw little parties by the wall, and we have to give them a piece before they break a hole on it." "I see." said Pete, looking at a small group of zombies at the fence, trying to get in. "So, let's do it, then." "Yeah... Go right ahead. Kill them all!" said Matthew, a little nervous with the zombies. "What do you mean with "Kill them all"? You ain't going to help us?" asked Kurt. "Nah, I'm not too good with those things. I can be your cheerleader, though. Go, team! Go!" he said, waving his arms, mimicking a cheerleader. "Man, shut the fuck up and grab this thing." said Kurt, handing Matthew Barry's crowbar. "But don't get a scratch on it, or the Big Bad Biker Monster will eat you while you sleep." "Big Bad Biker Monster..." repeated Pete to himself, holding his laugh. That was a pretty good definition of Barry, he tought. Pete grabbed an iron bar that the restaurant survivors usually used to kill the zombies and pushed it against one of their heads, breaking through the skull and passing through the head, getting out at the back. He pulled it back and did it to other two while Kurt and Matthew killed the rest of the around ten zombies. They all went back inside when finished, where they separated again. ---- "Hey. You have a second?" asked someone behind Pete. He turned around and found Tyrone standing by him. "I just want to talk okay? I'm not going to point a gun at your face again." "What is it?" asked Pete, in a suspicious tone. "I wanted to apologize for that shit before. Almost blowing your face off and shit. That... That was not cool." he said, struggling to get the words "But this doesn't means we're friends or any shit. I still don't trust your people, especially the biker dude, that one with the cap and the guy who was shot." "Relax, man. We're not going to hurt your people. If we were, you'd be all dead, the four of you." said Pete. "So what's stopping you to bash my head open right now?" asked Tyrone, warm-headed. "Literally nothing. We came in peace. I swear we won't cause any trouble." replied Pete. "You don't make promises you can't fulfill. I've seen enough shit to know how people are nuts now." said him, leaving to the second floor. "Man, what's up with this guy?" asked Pete to himself, watching Tyrone to get upstairs. "A more suitable question would be... What's not up with him." laughed Jim, behind Pete. "Sorry, I didn't knew the conversation was private, so I eavesdropped it all." "You were just listening to us?" asked him Pete, irritated. "No harm taken, I hope." he said, smirking. "But don't mind him, he was exactly the same with me, even though he was the one who ran right into my restaurant. It was hell to convince him to just don't kill everyone inside and get it all to himself because he didn't trusted us." "So when he came by Matthew and Jessie were already with you?" asked Pete, curious. "Nope, just Matt. They came by one by one, each one on a following day. Matthew apparently locked himself in the first building he came across - this one - and never put his head out of it again." replied Jim, laughing remembering Matthew's arrival "Tyrone came by the day after, starting fights and shit. To be honest, I didn't wanted him around, but I was outvoted." he whispered. "How about Jessie?" asked Pete, looking to her over his shoulders. She was struggling to make Leon take his pills, like a babysitter with a fussy baby. "Sweet Jessie, poor girl. She came by alone, just after she lost her husband. She never caused any trouble, always being a precious helping hand." he said. "And... What happened to the rest of the people?" asked Pete. "If you don't mind me asking, of course." he quickly added. "They're gone. My lady was bitten, I refused to believe it was actually something. She turned, and... Damn. I'm just glad those three were here." he said, sorrowfully, almost tearing up. "I'm sorry, man. I shouldn't have asked." apologized Pete, putting his hands on Jim's shoulder. "It's okay." Jim replied, wipping the tears of his eyes that didn't even fell. "You have the right to know, right? You're staying with us, at least for a while that is." "But, did MATTHEW really helped when that happened?" asked Pete, looking to Matthew. He was talking all loud and exalting to Nate his numerous battles with zombies and how he was the mightiest hero of the Earth. "Mightiest than The Hulk, Superman and Batman. Combined.", in his words. He got so convinced that he asked Kurt for an arm wrestle. It didn't even took two seconds to determine the winner. "When the dead comes gnawling on your shoes, you have no choice other than force yourself to do it." he said. "Pete! What are taking you so long there? The other boys already came back!" called him Angela, sitting on a table with Sarah, who was blindly looking through an unboarded part of the windows. "Heh. Get back to your girls, Peter. I don't want to stand between you and them." said Jim, tapping Pete's shoulder and laughing. "Predator, much?" "My girls?" asked him, confused. "Oh, no! No, no, no... Just one of them. The other one is just a close friend of us." he hurriedly explained himself. "You don't have to explain yourself. I was just fucking with you." laughed Jim "Now go. You ain't going to like if she haves to ask for you again." ---- Pete sat with the girls and Angela almost instantly cuddled with him, holding his arm. He looked to Sarah, the same dead look she had ever since Anthony's death. She didn't moved at all and even barely winked, looking straight through the little gap between the boards to the nothing outside. "Sarah?" Pete asked. She looked at him, expressionless as always. "How are you holding up? Any better?" "No." she simply asked and went back to look through the window. "Pete, I'm worried. She seems to be getting even worse after the Craig... "incident"..." whispered Angela on his ear. "I can hear you." Sarah said, annoyed but still immobile. "Loud and clear. It's not very nice to whisper behind someone's back." "Sorry." said Angela, ashamed. "We ain't talking behind your back, Sarah. We're worried about you. About your state." replied Pete. "Just look at yourself right now. You're not taking care of yourself, you're not eating enough, you're not sleeping enough... You doesn't even want to talk about it, and..." he started, but got interrupted. "Talk about what? About how my life got fucked up beyond recognition? First, the world ended, then I lost my only true love in life, and now a maniac redneck tried to fucking rape me! How the hell you think I'm feeling right now?" she angrily said, finally looking at them. "Tell me... What the hell I'm supposed to do now?" she asked, in a desperate way, breaking up in tears. "Sarah, I have no idea about what you are passing through, but... You gotta put yourself together." said Angela, holding her hands in an attempt to calm her down. "Look at me. You can't be giving up, Sarah." "Why not? That's what he did. When he put that damn gun in his head and pulled that fucking trigger." she said, shedding more and more tears every second. "That's why you can't." said Pete "Anthony had his motives, but he was wrong about it. Ending your life, or even worse... Living it like the way you live it now, is never the answer for anything." "It wouldn't solve anything, and you would only make the people that care about you feel bad." said Angela. "People that care about me, you say. Who are they? I don't see anyone who does it." she said. "We do." said Pete. "And by we, I mean everyone, not just me and Angela. Everyone in the group cares deeply about you. Even Barry." "Take little Nate by an example. The kid adores you." said Angela. "And you can see in Kurt's face how bad he feels to see you like that. Leon and Barry might seem like they're tough guys, but inside that shells, both of them are sorry for you." "Are... Are you being serious?" she asked, sobbing. "Never was more serious in my whole life." replied Pete. Cast Starring: *Peter Daniels Mitchell *Angela Williams *Kurt Harrison *Nate Harrison (No Lines) *Barry* *Leon Carter (No Lines) *''Does not appear in this episode'' Also Starring: *Jim *Tyrone *Sarah Co-Stars: *Matthew *Jessie (No Lines) Deaths None Trivia *The name of the episode may refer to several things: **The poorly builded wall over the gas station builded by Jim's group. **Matthew's laughable weakness. **Sarah's "defense", ignoring the world around her.